The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1887-05-12
REV. DIR. TALMAGE.
THE BROOKLYN DIVINE'S SUN
DAY SERMON
Subject; "What Books Shall We
Read? What Pictures
Look ATT"

counted the price Of them, ana Iouna
fifty thousand pieces Of sloer, Acts KIN ~
Paul had been stirring up Ephesus. with
some lively sermons about the sins of that
place Among the more important results
was the fact that the citizens brought out
their bad books and in public place made a
bonfire of them. see the people coming out
with their arms full of Ephesian literature,
and tossing it into the flames l hear an
economist standing by and saying; stop
hundred dollars worth Of books-do you
propofe to burn them all up! II you don't
want to read them yourselves, sell them ana
let somebody else read them" mo-, salu
the people, 'if these books are not good Tor
us, they are not good for anybody else ana
we shall stand and watch until tho last leaf
has turned to ashes. They have done us a
world of harm, and they shall never do
others harm" Hear the flames crackle and
roar!
Well, my friends, one Of the wants of the
cities of this country is great bonfire of bad
books and newspapers. We have enough luel
to make blaze 200 feet high. Many of the
publishing houses would do well to throw into
the blaze their entire stock of goods. Bring
forth the insuilerable trash, and put it into the
fire, and let it be known, in the presence of
God and angels, and men, that you are going
to rid your homes of the overlapping and UNI
derlying curse of profligate literature.
The printing press is the mightiest agency
on earth for good and for evil. The minister
of the Gospel, standing in a pulpit, has
responsible position; but do not think it is
as responsible as the position of an editor or
publisher. AT what distant point of time, at
what far out cycle of eternity, will cease the
influence of Henry j. Raymond, or Hor-
ace Greeley, or James Gordon Bennett, or
Watson Webb, or an Erastus Brooks, or
Thomas Kinsella! Take the simple statistics
that our New York dailieS now have circu-
4 - L.. 1,
sand per day and add to it the fact that three
of our weekly periodicals have an aggre-
gate circulation of about one million, and
then cipher, if you can, how far up, and how
far down, and how far out, reach the influences
of the American printing press Great God!
what is to be the issue OF al! this: l believe
the Lord intends the printing press to be the
means for the worlds rescue and evangelical
ton, and think that the great last battle of
the world will not be fought with swords and
guns, but with types and presses-a purified
and gospel literature triumphing over, tramp
ling down and crushing out forever that
which is depraved The only way to over
come unclean literature is by scattering
abroad that which is healthful. May God
speed the cylinders of an honest, intelligent,
aggressive, Christian printing press
| have to tell you this morning that the
greatest blessing that ever came to this nation
is that of an elevated literature, and the great
This last has its victims in all occupations and
departments. 1t has helped to fill insane asy-
lums, and peniteEt!arieS and almshouses, and
dens of shame The bodies of this infection
lie in the hospitals ana in the graves while
their souls are being tossed over into lost
eternity, an avalanche of horror and despair!
The London plague was nothing to it. That
counted its victims by thousands, but this
modern pest has already shovelled its millions
into the charnel-house of the morally dead.
The longest rail-train that ever ran over the
Erie or Hudson tracks was not long enough
or large enough to carry the beastllness and
the putrefaction which have been gathered
up in bad books and newspapers of this land
in the last twenty years
Now, it is amid such circumstances that
put, this morning, question OF overmaSter-
ing Importance to you and your families.
What books and newspapers shall we read!
You see | group them together A news
paper is only book in a swifter and more
portable shape, and the same rules which will
apply to book reading will apply to news
paper reading. What shall we read! Shall
our minds be the receptacle of everything
that an author has a mind to write! Shall
there be no distinction between the tree of
life and the tree of death! Shall we stoop
down and drink out of the trough which the
wickedness of men has filled with pollution
and shame? Shall we'mire in impurty, and
chase fantastic willie the-wisps across the
swamps, when We might walk in the bloom
ing gardens of God! o no! For the sake of
our present and everlasting welfare we must
make an intelligent and Christian choice.
Standing as we do, chin deep in fictitious
literature, the first question that many of the
young people are asking me is "Shall we
read novels" | reply: There are novels
that are pure, good, Christian, elevating to
the heart and ennobling to the life. But |
have still further to say that | believe that
ninety-nine out of the one hundred novels in
this day are baleful and destructive to the
last degree. A pure work of fiction is history
and poetry combined. 1t is a history of
things around us, with the licences and the
assumed names of poetry. The world can
never pay the debt which it owes
to such fictitious writers as Hawthorne and
Mckenzie, and Landon and Hunt, and
Arthur and Marion Harland, and others
whose names are familiar to all. The follies of
high life were never better exposed than by
Miss Edgeworth. The memories of the past
were never more faithfully embalmed rnan
novels are BEAUTIFULLY redolent with the
breath of the seaweed, and the air of the
American forest. Charles Kingsley has
smitten the morbidity of the world and led a
great many to appreciate the poetry OF sound
health, strong muscles, and fresh air. Thack-
cray did grand work in caricaturing the pre-
tenders to gentility and high blood. Dickens
has built his own monument in his books,
which are an everlasting plea for the poor,
and the anathema of injustice. Now, say,
books like these, read at right times, and read
in right proportion with other books, cannot
help but be enrolling and purifying: but
alas for the loathsome and impure literature
that has come upon this country in the shape
of novels, like a freshet overlooking all the
banks of decency and common sense! They are
coming from some of the most celebrated pub
fishing houses of the country They are coming
with recommendation of some of our religious
newspapers. They lie on your centre table
to curse your children, and blast with their
Internal fires generations unborn. You find
these books in the desk of the school miss, in
the trunk of the young man, in the steamboat
cabin, on the table of the hotel reception
room. You see light in your child's room
late at night. You suddenly so in and say
"What are you doingN 81 am reading.
"What are you reading:" "a book" You
look at the book: it is bad book "Where
did YOU get itn' II borrowed it." Alas
there are always those abroad who would
like TO loan your son or daughter
bad book! Everywhere everywhere an un
clean literature. l charge upon it the destruc
ton of ten thousand immortal souls, and
bid you this morning wake up to the magni
tude of the theme. l shall take all the world
literature-good novels and bad, travels tru
and false, histories faithful and incorrect
legends beautiful and monstrous all tracts
all chronicles, all epilogues, all family, city
State and national libraries-and pile then
up in pyramid of literature, and then shall
bring to bear upon it some grand, glorious
infallible, unmistakabe Christian principles
God help me to speak with reference to m,
last account and God help you to listen.
charge you, in the first place, to stand
aloof from all books that give false picture
of human life. Life is neither tragedy no
farce. Men are not all either knaves o
heroes. Women are neither angels nor furies
And yet if you depended upon much of tn
literature of the day, you would get the ide
that life, instead of being something earnest
something practical, is fitful and fantastic
and extravaganza thing. How poorly pre-
pared are that young man and women 70
the duties of to-day who spent last nigl
wading through brilliant passages descriptiv
of magnificent knavery and wickednesS! I'll
man will be looking all day long for his here
inc, in the tin shop, by the forge, in the fa'
tory, in the counting room, and he will nc
find her, and he will be dissatisfied. A ma
who gives himself up TO the indiscriminat
reading of novels will be nerveless, inane an
anuisance. He will be fit neither for the stor
nor the shop, nor the field A woman WI
gives herself up to the indiscrimiDat
reading of novels will be unfitte